


Birds of Prey

by EmilyKaldwin



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Background Emily/Wyman, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 14:59:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10493415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmilyKaldwin/pseuds/EmilyKaldwin
Summary: During bad nights, Emily dreams of falling.Or, how sometimes memories of a bleaker timeline can echo through and how one deals with unearned fears.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This got a bit rambly, but I wanted to explore the consequences of the high chaos timeline existing, plus why Emily was so fond of rooftops at the beginning of DH2.

During bad nights, Emily dreams of falling.

It's not quite a nightmare, not exactly a memory: she's a little girl again, a pawn in a game of chess played by men who were taught they knew better. But something's wrong; the shadows are longer, shrouding everything in the blue gloom of an ink-stained ocean, sharpening faces into hidden knives tainted with poison. Kingsparrow is resonating with the screams of men who were once brothers in arms, now fighting in the name of the conspirator who paid them off. Havelock is standing over her, a rictus marrying fear and defiance deforming his usually jovial face.

He says Corvo is there to kill them. He says Corvo killed everyone, that he's a mad dog who couldn't stay down after his job was done, and Emily spits in his face. She feels the fog inside her too, making her sharper, meaner, crueler. She tries to bite him when he manhandles her, but she's still too small, too weak, she can't get out. He carries her to the top of the tower, in the rain and the smoke, and he tries to get her to shut up. Maybe if she did this dream would have a different end, but this Emily is too full of spite, too strongheaded, and so when Corvo is there she screams for him; surely he can save her again, take her away and make this better?

But as he runs, she feels Havelock take a step back on the bridge, and then another step back _off_ the bridge. She tries to take Corvo's extended hand as he looks at her in horror, but it slips and she falls into the raging waters.

The rain is stifling her screams, the wind around her is picking up speed, she knows the sea is right below and she keeps falling and falling and screaming and her tears burn as they leave her eyes and she's falling faster and faster and...

She's still screaming but the rain is gone.  
Sometimes she wakes up in her mother's bed, Corvo sitting next to her with that concerned expression she hates and Alexi leaning against the back wall. Sometimes she's in her safe room nook, and Wyman is holding her head in their lap, their hands wiping away stray tears and smoothing her hair.

She knows they don't know what to do, how to help; how do you kill a memory that isn't yours? Sometimes she wants to ask her father if he has those kind of dreams too, if sometimes he catches himself remembering a Dunwall tainted with bile and blood, but she never does. Maybe it's better like that.

Instead, she goes outside, perched like some strange bird on the roof of Dunwall Tower. At first it was to spite the Outsider or whoever else who was giving her those nightmares and the knot in her stomach that appeared when she looked down, but after a while it became something else.

At night, on the rooftops, she could be anyone. She could be a silent thief, jumping silently between the manors of the elite, their riches a breath away. She could pretend she was chased by some sinister force, and climb her way through gutters and chimneys until she lost them. She could prove to herself that she wouldn't fall as long as she had a sure grip, confidence and no contingency plan.

And so she went out on the rooftops at night, discovering new hiding spots and ignoring the feeling of dread that was slowly seeping into her bones. After all, it wasn't like her life would be threatened again anytime soon.


End file.
